Etiole’s Bank of Horizon was everything one could expect from a fantasy bank. It was a massive white building made of the same smooth, polished stone as the other famous landmarks with intricate carvings and embellishments built into the architecture, as well as giant pillars rising from the ground to support a vaulted roof. Melia enthusiastically clambered up the many steps leading from the street level to the landing before the unnecessarily large main doors, two giant oak slabs carved with lions reared back in their hind legs, mirrored on each side so that their claws touched where the doors met seamlessly when closed. Judging from the guard-doorman standing silently at the ready to assist anyone with entering, who was not a small man, each door of the pair was easily 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide, enough to make even the tallest elf feel small when entering this ancient establishment.

  “Ladies, Little One. Allow me to assist.”

  The guard smoothly reached toward the massive iron rung bolted into the relief acting as a handle and, with a slight grunt, swung the door open. For a brief moment, Melia amused herself with wondering whether or not she would be able to open the doors herself. Not because she wasn’t strong enough (she was confident she could break them down if need be, but that was “opening” the doors in only the loosest sense), but because the handles were so high above her head she might not have the leverage to start pulling. The bank was built to be grand, and it was never designed for the little folk in the first place.

  Inside, Melia was met with a sight both familiar and foreign. It was like seeing an old friend after years and years apart. There was enough familiarity to light up her eyes in recognition, but so many differences she could never have foreseen to keep her eyes peeled wide open in wonder.

  In the game, like much of the world itself Melia was discovering, the bank was much smaller. It still appeared huge in her eyes (as any building would to a gnome in a world filled with giants) but nothing like this grand, sprawling foyer set with beautiful furniture, potted plants, and whole sections of comfortable, expensive looking chairs grouped together around small tables to create entire regions just for waiting and lounging. The building in the game had been somewhat utilitarian. It had just enough decoration to give the feeling of an upscale bank, but in reality it must have been a simple, unfurnished rectangle of a room maybe 15 feet wide and 30 feet deep, with four teller stations set into the right hand wall.

  The real bank was easily a hundred feet wide by much more than that deep. Maybe several hundred feet, but Melia’s sense of scale was still a little skewed, so she couldn’t say for certain. Looking up revealed high, vaulted ceilings with stunning murals painted on the ceiling, a touch she never would have noticed in the game.

  There weren’t many customers inside as it was relatively early in the day, but the few that were seemed relatively well to do. Styles of dress followed real historical trends from Melia’s original world, but there was no accuracy to be had for when they first appeared. “Suits” and “dresses” could mean a wide variety of things when the inspiration was drawn from a period of several hundred years, from early medieval times to renaissance to Victorian, Elizabethan, and early industrial eras.

  And yet nobody seemed out of place, except for perhaps the two young adventurers and the gnome, looking like she would fit in better at a nightclub rather than high society. Their small group got a few stray glances, but nobody seemed bothered by their presence enough to offer up snide or disparaging comments.

  Melia, Jessica, and Y’cennia got into the short line and approached the first counter to clear up. There were at least a dozen different windows, showing that if the bank needed to operate at maximum capacity they could cycle through hundreds of customers per hour, but currently most were closed, as there was no need. Four were currently open, and a lady in a Rococo style dress was gathering up a small purse and happily shuffled away. The middle aged man behind the counter waved a hand and the group approached.

  Immediately, Melia encountered a problem.

  The bank, much like most of Horizon, was built on a human scale and this world had very little in the way of accommodations regarding accessibility. A bit of an oversight, Melia frowned as she craned her head back to stare at the underside of a polished hardwood counter several feet above her head. Standing where one normally would at an acceptable distance for such a personal and private institution such as a bank left her incapable of even seeing the counter. She turned around to look up at Jessica, who was giving her an amused, curious look as if to say, okay, what now?

  Melia sighed and raised her arms, silently asking to be picked up. If this was the game, she would have simply jumped onto the counter and be done with it.

  …no, if this was the game, she probably would have had auto run enabled, and the game’s polygons would have either been sloped in such a way that she automatically climbed onto the counter without bothering to step up, or she would have simply continued to run uselessly face first into the desk while her detached viewpoint allowed her to click on the npc without ever having to say a word.

  Needless to say, that was not going to happen.

  Still, the bespectacled man behind the counter had on a perfect customer service smile, neutral and inoffensive, watching silently as Melia adjusted in Jessica’s arms.

  “Good afternoon, adventurers, Little One. I apologize that we don’t have any counters built for those of smaller stature; you may stand on the counter, or would you prefer if a stool was brought out?”

  Relief washed over Melia. She didn’t want to look like a child as she asked to see her vault. Her estimation of the bank increased, too, as she had Jessica place her down onto the sparkling, polished wood. For the bank to care enough about their customers to not care if they damaged such beautiful woodwork said…something. Melia wasn’t actually sure what. Maybe a master craftsman carved this wood and it was treated? Or maybe there was a janitor class specifically designed for heavy duty cleaning?

  Neither here nor there.

  “Good afternoon!” Melia chirped brightly. “I have an account that I would like to access…,” she began, but a sudden thought had her smile faltering somewhat. “…but it’s been a very long time since I last visited. Do accounts close due to inactivity?”

  The man nodded encouragingly, so at least the question itself did not appear strange.

  “Indeed, it depends on several things. How long ago the account was created and last used, and what type of account was opened. Any account that has fees or requires dues would be closed if payment cannot be collected.”

  The information was helpful enough, and the man gave it in a professional, unassuming way, but Melia frowned. Despite his smile, Melia couldn’t help but feel looked down upon.

  And not because she was a gnome, because from where she currently stood, on top of a four foot counter, her eyes were slightly higher than the man’s, who was of average height and standing on the floor.

  Was it her outfit? Her [Reverie] was not formal clothing by any means, and she knew she looked something like a college age goth.

  Was it her companions? Melia hoped not. They’d done nothing and said nothing, but Melia knew people often judged on appearances alone, and her companions looked every bit the part of fledgling adventures just trying to make ends meet.

  They probably had no business setting foot into an upscale establishment like Horizon’s premier bank, but the implied lack of courtesy left Melia wanting.

  The man’s smile never faltered, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. No, Melia determined, he was not judging them, but he was clearly bored, and likely believed that they were insignificant enough and forgettable enough that he didn’t need to give them his very best effort.

  A pity, really, but that wouldn’t affect the contents of Melia’s account.

  “Mmm,” Melia put a finger to her chin. “I think I last visited around a hundred years ago?” she said innocently enough. She caught the man’s eyes dilate slightly, but he recovered very fast. Places like this probably dealt with long lived people more often than others. “I’m sorry, I don’t know exactly when.”

  To be truthful, Melia didn’t even know for sure it was over a century, but she was going with the working theory she was slowly putting together about having woken up as her game character in the game world after dying in her original one. Not that she could really tell anybody that, nor did she really care or need to.

  “I see,” the man stood up a little straighter, appearing slightly more respectful. Melia resisted the urge to roll her eyes; as if her age alone should afford her more polite or professional treatment. Though, perhaps, in some ways it did, since the older somebody was, the higher level they likely were.

  “Well, if my lady Little One would be so kind, do you know your account number or deposit box?”

  Melia drew her head back. It seemed so obvious once he said it, having an account number ready when visiting a bank was a no brainer. But she never needed anything like that in the game, and she didn’t have the first clue as to what hers might be.

  “Um, I’m afraid I don’t,” she tried to hide her cringe, and she could hear the teller’s sigh of patience being tested.

  “No matter,” he quickly replied. He rooted around in his desk area and pulled up what looked like a fantasy iPad. It seemed to be a small clear pane of mostly clear crystal, probably quartz, with a metal rim. It was only slightly bigger than the man’s hand, though of course Melia’s was much smaller.

  “Please place your hand on the tablet. This acts as a bridge between your personal system display and the bank’s records.”

  Melia couldn’t help but note the lack of typical privacy notices she was used to seeing regarding the collection and sharing of her information, but that might not have been a problem in this world. She didn’t think twice and placed her hand onto the tablet, watching in fascination as a clear blue light lit up around the edges and rose from her palm to her fingertips, like some sort of hand scanner.

  “Is this new?” she couldn’t help but ask. She heard Y’cennia mutter something about unquenchable gnomes and the man raised a single eyebrow.

  “Within the last 40 years or so, yes.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  His tone of voice may have been polite, but his expression and apparent age left it perfectly unsaid that no, obviously this was not new, and was likely older than he was.

  The scan itself was quick and after taking back the tablet, the man tapped it several times before placing it down while staring off into space. He was obviously staring at his own system screen, but his brows quickly scrunched up into a frown.

  Several minutes passed as he stared into nothing, the silence stretching awkwardly as Jessica and Y’cennia began to fidget. Melia gained a frown of her own.

  “Is there a problem?”

  Clearly there was, and this was her attempt to invite the teller to clear the awkward air.

  “You say you’ve opened an account before?” he asked, his professional tone replaced with something borderline suspicious.

  “Yes?” Melia hesitated. Technically, she never did. All players immediately had access to the bank on character creation. How they then managed it with upgrades and filled it full of junk was another story, but entry-level banking was available to everybody.

  “And the last time you visited was, ah, ‘about a hundred years ago’?”

  Melia could practically hear the air quotes. She narrowed her eyes.

  “I don’t know the exact time frame, but yes, it would have been about- what was that?”

  The man tried to look utterly calm, but Melia could see the surprise in his eyes that she detected something.

  “You just hit a silent alarm, didn’t you?” she hissed. She never would have guessed a fantasy world would have such a thing, but she could see the faint trace of magic wafting out from behind the counter and could read the wispy runes and arcane language hazily drifting in the air beside him. She followed the trail down like smoke to where the man’s hand was subtly resting underneath the counter. The fact that the rune estote was connected to tonaz told her literally this was an “alert with noise cancelation”.

  Several moments later, at the far end of the room, a door opened and out of the corner of her eye, Melia saw two hulking city guards. In the game, depending on what city they were in, these npcs would have generic names like “Thief Catcher” or “Peace Keeper”. They would be relatively high level, since they were put in major cities by the developers to curb the griefing brought about from bored high level players terrorizing noobs.

  Melia sighed. Guards, she could deal with. Especially since her quick [Identify] put them in the high 600s for their levels. Certainly they would be able to handle a huge majority of the populace, but they were no match for her. They weren’t even the highest level adventurers she’d seen, though they were up there.

  It wasn’t until they got closer that her two companions noticed their approach, and thus tensed up behind her, clearly frightened. Y’cennia began to tremble and Melia felt her anger spike. Once again it seemed she really didn’t care what happened to herself, but as soon as her companions were involved, she was on a shorter fuse. Something to keep an eye on.

  She kept her gaze firmly on the teller behind the counter, who was looking both relieved and a little smug, waiting for the two men to get closer. Not too close, as she didn’t want them within arm’s reach of her two girls, and she spoke up loudly.

  “Do not come any closer,” she commanded, and the two guards froze. The teller behind the counter physically recoiled, as if Melia had slapped him, and he began to pale. There was power in her words, though she didn’t consciously extend her aura or whatever, and Melia herself was a little surprised at how authoritative she sounded. After a second passed and nothing happened, the guards relaxed a little and took another two steps. They made no move to raise their weapons or restrain the girls, so Melia didn’t react violently, but she spoke again.

  “Do not touch either of them. If you do, I will make you pay dearly.”

  The threat was not meant to be veiled, and she willed her daggers to appear on her belt. They glistened wetly in the well lit room and Melia could see more than one pair of eyes settle on them.

  She sighed heavily.

  Her hearing was strong enough to catch muffled conversations across the room, so Melia could hear the silence. There might have only been a dozen other people, both bankers and guests, milling about inside, but right then, everyone was silent, holding their breath and barely daring to breathe.

  “Tell me what it says,” she commanded, and the man stared down at her in shock as if seeing her for the first time. Likely, he had only seen her as a plucky, energetic little gnome, which was mostly the truth and how Melia wished to be portrayed. Never would he have ever questioned if she could be a threat to him or anybody else. Melia felt him cast a quick [Identify] on her and watched his eyes dart from his invisible screen and what she guessed was appearing over her head. She wondered exactly what he was able to see, and if she was annoyed enough that it showed she was hostile. She allowed herself to smirk, imagining the overbearing threat icon it might give him in place of her level, subtly hinting that any aggression toward her person was a bad idea.

  “There are multiple names registered to this account,” he said, though through his tone of voice Melia knew that wasn’t the issue. Many people, adventurers and nobility alike used aliases for one reason or another. He began listing them off.

  Melia (without a surname).

  Mellia (with an extra L).

  Meli.

  Melli.

  Melii.

  Meili.

  All of those were valid, each one of them a name of one of her alts. He continued for several more names, hesitating at the end.

  “Meliastraza,” he said dubiously, “And….”

  “And?” Melia prodded.

  “Melia Marcus,” he replied instantly though with clear hesitation. “Presumed deceased.”

  “Hah,” Melia scoffed. In any other instance, she would have found this fascinating. “Clearly I am not.”

  “But you can’t be her,” the man easily blurted out, as if compelled. “There has to be some sort of mistake.”

  Melia resisted the urge to ask why not. She had already been over that enough times with her new group, and she knew that while her name held some small amount of fame, it was tied to somebody she was not. Mainly, a human [Mage]. Explaining her situation time and time again, especially to complete strangers, was ineffective and exhausting.

  “How?” she asked instead. “You said that thing linked directly to the system. The system can’t be fooled, not like that.”

  There were many ways the system screen might look different to one person than it appeared to another. Especially for the classes reliant on subterfuge, like [Assassins], [Thieves], or [Rogues], that didn’t want people knowing who they were. But that was a failure of an observer to be able to see through the deception, not a person tricking the system itself. This was different.

  The man looked clearly at a loss, shrinking back under Melia’s intense gaze, not knowing what to do.

  “How can we resolve this? Clearly, my account still exists. I want to access it. I’ve already given you proof of who I am. If you can’t trust the system, what can you?”

  Melia closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, regretting what she was about to do.

  “Do I need to talk to your manager?”

  She could hear her companions cringe, and honestly, she was cringing too. But she didn’t know how else to prove who she was, outside of transforming into her true form, which upon reflection would probably do the opposite of help, making them want to keep her even further away, on top of causing massive property damage and perhaps a little bodily harm as a byproduct.

  “Perhaps I can be of assistance.”

  The group turned to the side to face the owner of the wheezy, breathless voice. To their left behind the counter, coming out of a rear door, was an ancient looking man. He was bent and wizened with age, with a heavily wrinkled face and a head of wispy, stark white hair. His gnarled hands trembled slightly as they clutched a simple black cane. This was a human who reached old age not through the extended life afforded by monstrous stats or high levels, but sheer force of will and the refusal to die.

  “Keeper Jonathan!” the teller gasped, hurrying forward to assist the old man. Jonathan, for his part, allowed himself to be steered toward the counter where he could partially rest his weight.

  Though Melia was sure she had never seen the man before in this life, he was strikingly familiar. Perhaps it was just the name, or something about his bearing, but he almost felt like a very old acquaintance, long since gone his separate way, but never quite forgotten.

  “I would not be surprised at all if you’ve forgotten me, my lady,” he bowed very respectfully toward Melia, making those around her raise their brows curiously, “But I’ve never forgotten you.”

  She stared at the man in shock. This was the first time since waking up in this world that she had clear, irrefutable proof that she was in the world she knew and was familiar with, and not only that, she was known.

  Melia didn’t expect her demand to see the manager to actually work, if this Jonathan fellow was actually a manager in the first place, and now she would forever be branded as a Karen. She shot a quick glance at her system and let out an inaudible sigh of relief: it had not given her a new title. Her anger mostly forgotten, with the two guards frozen where they stood, Melia turned to the new arrival and cast a quick [Inspect].

  Jonathan Tullue

  Level: 492

  Class: [Banker]

  Something about seeing the name “Jonathan Tullue” right above [Banker] sparked a memory, and Melia’s face instantly brightened.

  “I do remember you!” she snapped a finger and pointed at the man, who was now standing directly in front of her, the young teller replaced and mostly forgotten, standing uneasily several feet behind.

  There was nothing special about Jonathan, nothing that would have brought him fame or accolades from the game. He wasn’t a part of the story, some grand overarching tale or scheme, and he didn’t serve the slightest role whatsoever in any quest or plot. He was an average, forgettable npc, designed to be filler and pad out the world to make it seem more lived in and less robotic.

  In the game, the bank had four teller windows with npcs stationed in front of them that players could click on to access their vault, but technically, players didn’t even need to. They could click on the giant vault door in the back itself, or one of several smaller vault doors built into the walls. The human npcs were just a novel touch to make the game feel more alive.

  Jonathan was stationed in the middle right stall, the second one players saw when entering. Melia never went to the first, because there was always a crowd of player avatars clipping into each other, forming a giant ball of arms, heads, and bodies. Not that it would actually affect them being able to see their storage, but Melia liked the calmer, less crowded, more personal feel of the second stall.

  It meant she had to travel a few extra steps, and honestly, gamers were pretty lazy.

  The man seemed to almost tear up as joy spread across his face. Melia tried hard to keep the confusion off her own, because to her, he had been an afterthought, while to him, she was a relic of his past.

  “My lady, you honor me so.”

  He bowed deeply and Melia did her best to fight against her instincts, disapproving of such honorifics. She didn’t feel like a noble, or much of a “lady”, but she supposed, to those who really knew her in this world, she was.

  “Never did I think I would get to see such wonders again!”

  Melia tilted her head. Was he talking about her vault? Did the npcs actually get to see what they put in and took out? She had to fight back a cringe. She had a lot of weird crap in her bank, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about sharing that with anybody.

  A voice scoffed, and suddenly the first teller became apparent again. With Melia’s attention shifting to him, he shrank back, but that didn’t stop him from questioning the old man.

  “Is that why you’ve come?” he asked Jonathan. “To get a glimpse into her vault?”

  “Yes,” Jonathan said without the slightest hint of shame, but his watery voice became firm and stern. “And as for you, Michael, you should alert Mr. Benton. And take these guards with you, they’re useless here. Or do you perhaps think it wise to anger an ancient legend?”

  The guards’ eyes flicked to Melia, who guessed she was the “ancient legend”, despite not feeling like one. Michael gulped and nodded before quickly retreating.

  “I apologize for any slight against you, my lady,” the old man said, bowing once more. “Now…how may I serve you?”

  Despite being a frail old man himself, Melia couldn’t help but smile at his words, as the old voice line from the game overlapped in her head and brought her another wave of nostalgia.